Madge Figgy's Chair

Tol-Pedn-Penwith - By Jim Champion (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"The fine rocks of Tol-Pedn-Penwith have on the top of them a stone, which is called "The Chair." Here it is said a famous witch and wrecker named Madge Figgy used to sit and practise her magic arts to raise storms and wreck vessels. That she caused several wrecks by the display of false and misleading lights, there is no doubt."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Tol-Pedn-Penwith

Wreckers at Lands End

Shipwrecked Mulheim near Land's End - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiedfw/1571462556/sizes/z/in/photostream/ Some rights reserved by jimbowen0306

"About a mile and a half from the shore [at Land's End] rises the tall Longships Lighthouse, built of granite by Mr. Smith, in 1796 - a most needful building on such a coast as this, especially as Cornwall, a hundred years ago, still had wreckers on the shore, who showed false lights and wrecked many a good ship on the deadly rocks."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Longships Lighthouse

Smugglers and Wreckers in Cornwall

Helford River - Frenchmans Creek - © Copyright Mel Landells and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

"There is a cave in these cliffs [of Mullion] that is of some extent, and was probably in old days a resort and hiding-place of smugglers, who were rather abundant in this wavewashed county, which had also an evil reputation of being the abode of wreckers. There were many smugglers' caves or holes on the banks of the Helford river, and several have been discovered on the coast about St. Keverne by the falling in of their roofs. In one near Penzance a skeleton was discovered with its clothes on, lying beside two or three kegs of spirits."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Mullion
Map - Helford River
Map - Saint Keverne
Map - Penzance